


what i yearn for

by Magpied_Spider



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: M/M, how many rumi references can i cram into this fic?, i'm so happy that guitar stories are becoming a little subgenre here, mentions of the other Get Down Brothers (mainly zeke and shao)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 10:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10638102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpied_Spider/pseuds/Magpied_Spider
Summary: “There’s something about storms like that,” Thor said. The tension leaking away from the day, the awfulness of the heat and the humidity giving way to a warm downpour from the sky. Like the relief of letting something of yourself escape onto a wall through the spray of paint.Like feeling the mask you hadn’t even realized you were wearing slip off as you walked into freedom.there's a storm, and a guitar





	

**Author's Note:**

> me: i've got two assignments that i still haven't written for other fandoms  
> me: i've got a french assignment that i need to get done  
> inner me: watch the get down and write fic for that instead
> 
> inspired by[ this post](literaryclassique.tumblr.com/post/159470479822/bitch-im-crying) , title from a Rumi poem that as far as i can tell doesn't have a title but starts with the line _show me your face_.

The humidity of the day had been a blanket pressing down on the energy and life of the entire city. That the watery soup of the air had finally coalesced into droplets was a welcome relief, a heavy, damp towel finally wrung out to dry.

Dizzee had to make a run for it across the streets as the heavens opened, half-shielding his bag as he unlocked the door, made his way into the hideaway he was finding he was spending more and more time in.

He didn’t call out to announce his presence – either Thor was here, or he wasn’t, a shout wouldn’t change that – but he stopped short at something unfamiliar.

Amidst the chaos of the room, a pattern of disorganization that made perfect sense to the two of them, there was a guitar – it had to be Thor’s, for no one else came in here – leaning against the wall.

Dizzee could almost hear Shao scoffing _the whack part_ , but a blink and a shake of the head cleared that out. Shao might have not said anything when he’d had to collect Dizzee, might have stood by his alien brother, but he didn’t know everything. He’d dismissed _Set Me Free_ as well, and look at how that had taken off.

It had introduced Dizzee to a new kind of freedom, that was for sure. A world of free people running free, his lips on Thor’s, anticipation and discovery and revelation. _Loud music drunken parties and wild dance one hand holding a cup of wine one hand caressing your hair_ , Rumi said.

Dizzee dropped his bag to the side, went over to look at the instrument, though he hesitated to touch. Shao didn’t like anyone touching his turntables when he wasn’t there, Zeke could get snappy if you tried to get a look at one of his many notebooks without his go-ahead, hell, even Ra-Ra got a bit scary when someone touched his first edition comics. Dizzee himself had been known to conjure obscure insults when someone moved his paints around.

The guitar stood out among the room for its plainness – in a room covered with layers upon layers of art, of bright color and brighter characters jumping off the wall, illuminated by the glow of lightning from the highest clouds, of flying saucers and an alien passenger dressed for an opera, the sight of a guitar – plain, pale wood, scratches on the edge not so much from age as carelessness of past owners – with nothing more than a small _Thor_ tag on it seemed out of place.

The rain was becoming a storm, pounding on the walls and the roofs overhead, heavy. He’d be here a while, that was for sure. Not that he wouldn’t have been anyway – his parents’ best attempts at maintaining a curfew could never last, couldn’t withstand the call within for him to make art, to express himself, to escape.

 _This city without you is a prison,_ Rumi said, _I am dying to get out._

He might be stuck, but he could never feel trapped. Not here.

Where was Thor? He wasn’t in the room, and a brief glance around showed he wasn’t in the tiny bathroom, and he wouldn’t be anywhere else _in_ the building.

He gazed up to the ceiling – adorned with stars and planets, comets and wonders – and knew exactly where to go.

Up on the roof, Dizzee stood under the cover for the stairs, looking out to the vista, the haze of the city skyline, blurred from the sheets of rain, coming down somewhere between _bucketing_ and _cats and dogs_. A flash of lightning illuminated the cityscape, spreading a bright light onto the darkened afternoon.

Thor’s silhouette stood stark against the background, at the corner of the roof, hair momentarily lit up like a halo around him in the brightness, like the strobe of the lights in the clubs.

Dizzee didn’t call out – didn’t want to break the moment. Thor had his head tilted back – whether he was tasting the rain or just looking up into the clouds, Dizzee couldn’t tell, but a warmth bloomed in his chest at how happy Thor looked. It was the sort of stance he got when they were bombing, when the cops had run the wrong way, when they were just relaxing together.

As it turned out, Dizzee didn’t have to call. Thor turned around to him of his own accord, and through the rain his grin lit up his face better than the lightning ever could. He pushed some of his dripping hair from the front of his face, flicking away the excess droplets, as he walked towards Dizzee. His wet shirt clung to his frame, halfway to transparent. Dizzee imagined that if he turned up like that at, his mother would fuss that he’d catch cold, but cold was the opposite of the description he’d use for the look.

“Good day for it, huh?” The thunder punctuated his words with a deep crack, echoing back from the buildings around them.

There hadn’t been a cloud in the sky save the ever-present fog of pollution on Sunday, the light from the moon had been so bright the next night it had been almost like day. A thunderstorm on Thursday was just the latest variant on the theme.

“Does the weather follow our words, or are our words our best hopes of ruling its capricious nature?”

If he’d said it to the Get Down Brothers, they’d have either asked exactly what the fuck he was on about, chalked it up as yet another weird Dizzee thing, or ignored it outright. He still would have said it, he would not seal his lips because of the city’s freaks, but knowing that Thor understood what he had said, what he had meant, and would answer in kind… there was something about being heard that made it so much better.

No need to wonder whether or not the fallen tree has made a sound when there’s someone there to hear it.

Hand in hand, they traded half-formed rhetoric on the inevitability of weather and the illusory nature of time as they made their way back down the stairs, to the sanctum, to their space.

Dizzee pushed an escaped strand of wet hair – still dripping slightly at the tip, the water cooler than it had been when it fell as rain – behind Thor’s ear, and felt his skin move under his hand as the fond smile travelled across his face.

He just had to kiss that smile, and did.

By the time they were back in the room, they were halfway to giggling, high off each other, only dropping their joined hands so that Thor could remove his shoes and squelching wet socks.

“There’s something about storms like that,” Thor said. The tension leaking away from the day, the awfulness of the heat and the humidity giving way to a warm downpour from the sky. Like the relief of letting something of yourself escape onto a wall through the spray of paint.

Like feeling the mask you hadn’t even realized you were wearing slip off as you walked into freedom.

Dizzee nodded, gave a smile. He understood.

The rain continued to pound, a soft static to drown out the world.

Midway through managing to tear his eyes away from Thor’s face to look up to the source of the sudden flash of lightning through the windows and the inevitable thunder that followed, Dizzee’s gaze fell on the guitar again. “That yours?”

Thor followed his eyes, and gave what was almost a nervous laugh. “Yeah. Uh… yeah.”

“I didn’t know you played.”

Thor waved his hand, a plane adjusting the aileron. “Kind of. It’s not like what you guys do, making completely new stuff out of what you’re given, it’s…” He trailed off, shrugged. “It’s different, right?”

“I get it.” He paused. Then, “Zeke writes most of our stuff.”

Of course, the point was that it was _their_ words when they were bombing walls, tunnels, trains – even when it was Rumi’s words, they were the words Dizzee had picked, the work surrounding them making them something they weren’t before. But, while everyone got some input, it was Zeke that wrote the Get Down Brothers’ words.

Maybe it was different for him, having his words disappear into the air, heard by so many and yet still ephemeral, his friends spitting the verses to make them into something they weren’t quite before.

“You’re still making the music, it wouldn’t be there if you weren’t. It’s not all you, sure, but there’s you in there.”

Dizzee grinned. “Interpretation. That’s one way of looking at it, yeah.” He paused. “Shao calls us the instruments.”

“Instruments. I kinda like it. And you’re…” Thor looked at him, calculating. “No, wait, don’t tell me.” He tilted his head. Dizzee raised an eyebrow. “Flute? No… maybe?” Dizzee somehow managed to suppress the surprise from his face, because what would the odds of Thor getting the one instrument in the orchestra Dizzee had picked? Thor narrowed his eyes. “ _Alto_ flute?”

“Gets windy up in the galaxy,” Dizzee said in answer, completely deadpan. Thor gave a soft snort of laughter at the pun. Dizzee ruined any pretense of seriousness with a wink. “Close. Other way.”

Thor nodded. Piccolo flute. Somehow, it made sense to both of them.

“So, instruments,” Dizzee repeated, this time gesturing at the guitar.

“Yeah. This one’s…” Thor made a face.

“Unfortunately blank?”

“Read my mind. Yeah. So I was thinking, maybe, _we_ could…” he waved a hand. Bring life to a void, colorful chaos to emptiness, unsaid between them but understood.

“Yeah?”

And Thor looked at Dizzee with wonder in his eyes, as if the secrets of the universe had just revealed to him that Dizze, an alien in a top hat, was the only true human in existence.

He grabbed the guitar, and, at Dizzee’s gesture, turned it to how he would hold it as if he were going to play. Dizzee walked around him, looking at the angles.

He made a circuit, two, then sat down, grabbing at a box of half-full markers.

There was a spot where Thor could glance down to and look at, but anyone watching wouldn’t be able to see. Dizzee uncapped a marker, the _Rumi 411_ tag so ingrained in his muscle memory he could do it, has done it in his sleep. He paused, looked at Thor, with his own marker adding stars to the other side of the body, and with a flutter in his chest and a courage born of impulse, added a heart around it.

Hell, he’d spray-painted a heart in the air in the middle of their Get Down Brothers gig around where Thor was in the audience; this was comparatively subtle.

The rest of the group – led by Shao, but most everyone followed his lead – got on Zeke’s back whenever he started being sappy about Mylene, but it was times like this that Dizzee understood exactly what Zeke meant when he spoke of a fire in his heart, thunder in his chest.

Thor uncapped another marker, the bright electric blue of comic-book lightning.

They made their way around the guitar, rotating it for easier access, adding on to what the other had done. Thor spotted the Rumi-heart, and brought his hands up to his neck, grabbing the back of it with his palms, elbows tucking in under his chin, immediately followed by him getting up and walking halfway around the room.

Dizzee was worried for a moment that he might have made a misstep with it, but then he saw Thor’s grin.

 _Dancing in an orbital circle_ , said Rumi.

He couldn’t help but return the grin as Thor made his way back to where Dizzee and the guitar still sat.

He held out a hand, which Dizzee took. Thor brought it to his lips and kissed the back of it. “Holy shit, Dizz,” he said, stars in his eyes, like he couldn’t believe how lucky he was.

Dizzee could barely hold his gaze, but couldn’t hold back his own grin. This time, it was Thor who leaned over to initiate the kiss – soft and gentle and filling up the whole of Dizzee’s world.

They flipped the guitar over eventually, put it string side down. The two of them planned it out with little more than a few points and exchanging single words, before they began to work from opposite ends towards the middle. The few “hey, pass the—“ didn’t even need the color specified.

When they finally stepped back to look at it together, they both caught their breath at the same moment.

The sky a backdrop to the two of them, a hammer-wielding god and an alien in a top hat. Rumi’s Red Devil Avocado skin the color of Thor’s eyes, the two of them reaching out to the other, caught in the moment just before their hands touched.

 

**Author's Note:**

> shout-out to [stormss](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stormss/pseuds/stormss) who coined the "rumi's skin and thor's eyes are the same colour" thing
> 
> a music joke: what do you call a wrong note played softly? a mistake. what do you call a wrong note played loudly? an interpretation.
> 
> i am australian, so if there's any glaring things in this fic that Would Not Be In America, Especially During This Time Period, please let me know
> 
> i'm rowingviolahere on tumblr, please come and yell with me as i try and figure out what dæmons these characters have
> 
> comments feed the author


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